November 2011 – Page 3 – artdiamondblog.com

Global Warming Benefits Commerce by Opening Northeast Passage

“The Northeast Passage Opens Up. The Arctic ice cap has been shrinking, opening up new shipping lanes. This has given access to oil and gas fields, as well as fishing in international waters that were not accessible before.” Source of caption and map: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) ARKHANGELSK, Russia — Rounding the northernmost tip of Russia in his oceangoing tugboat this summer, Capt. Vladimir V. Bozanov saw plenty of walruses, some pods of beluga whales and in the distance a few icebergs.

One thing Captain Bozanov did not encounter while towing an industrial barge 2,300 miles across the Arctic Ocean was solid ice blocking his path anywhere along the route. Ten years ago, he said, an ice-free passage, even at the peak of summer, was exceptionally rare.
But environmental scientists say there is now no doubt that global warming is shrinking the Arctic ice pack, opening new sea lanes and making the few previously navigable routes near shore accessible more months of the year. And whatever the grim environmental repercussions of greenhouse gas, companies in Russia and other countries around the Arctic Ocean are mining that dark cloud’s silver lining by finding new opportunities for commerce and trade.
Oil companies might be the most likely beneficiaries, as the receding polar ice cap opens more of the sea floor to exploration. The oil giant Exxon Mobil recently signed a sweeping deal to drill in the Russian sector of the Arctic Ocean. But shipping, mining and fishing ventures are also looking farther north than ever before.
“It is paradoxical that new opportunities are opening for our nations at the same time we understand that the threat of (p. B13) carbon emissions have become imminent,” Iceland’s president, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, said at a recent conference on Arctic Ocean shipping held in this Russian port city not far south of the Arctic Circle.
At the same forum, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin of Russia offered a full-throated endorsement of the new business prospects in the thawing north.
“The Arctic is the shortcut between the largest markets of Europe and the Asia-Pacific region,” he said. “It is an excellent opportunity to optimize costs.”

For the full story, see:
ANDREW E. KRAMER. “Amid the Peril, a Dream Fulfilled.” The New York Times (Tues., October 18, 2011): B1 & B13.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated October 17, 2011 and has the title “Warming Revives Dream of Sea Route in Russian Arctic.”)

“The tanker Vladimir Tikhonov in the Bering Strait.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Schumpeter’s Simile for Capitalist Mobility

(p. 156) In fact, the upper strata of society are like hotels which are indeed always full of people, but people who are forever changing.

Source:
Schumpeter, Joseph A. The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle. Translated by Redvers Opie. translation of 2nd German edition that appeared in 1926; translation first published by Harvard in 1934 ed. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1983.

Modern Humans and Neanderthals Coexisted in Europe for at Least 10,000 Years

“One of the infant teeth (a deciduous left upper first molar) whose age had been underestimated. The white bar is 1 centimeter in length.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A4) The fossils seemed hardly worth a second look. The one from England was only a piece of jawbone with three teeth, and the other, from southern Italy, was nothing more than two infant teeth. But scientists went ahead, re-examining them with refined techniques, and found that one specimen’s age had previously been significantly underestimated and that the other’s dating and identity had been misinterpreted.

They had in fact discovered the oldest known skeletal remains of anatomically modern humans in the whole of Europe, two international research teams reported Wednesday.
The scientists who made the discovery and others who study human origins say they expect the findings to reignite debate over the relative capabilities of the immigrant modern humans and the indigenous Neanderthals, their closest hominid relatives; the extent of their interactions; and perhaps the reasons behind the Neanderthal extinction. The findings have already prompted speculation that the Homo sapiens migrations into Europe may have come in at least two separate waves, rather than just one.
In tests conducted at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit in England, the baby teeth from Italy were dated at 43,000 to 45,000 years old. Other analysis showed the teeth to be those of a modern human, not a Neanderthal, as previously thought when the fossil was unearthed in 1964 from the Grotta del Cavallo.

For the full story, see:
JOHN NOBLE WILFORD. “Fossil Teeth Put Humans in Europe Earlier Than Thought.” The New York Times (Thur., November 3, 2011): A4.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated November 2, 2011.)

The Penalty for Insulting the Future King

(p. 390) Brummell’s fall from grace was abrupt and irreversible. He and the Prince of Wales had a falling out and ceased speaking. At a social occasion, the prince pointedly ignored Brummell and instead spoke to his companion. As the prince withdrew, Brummell turned to the companion and made one of the most famously ill-advised remarks in social history. ‘Who’s your fat friend?’ he asked. Such an insult was social suicide. Shortly afterwards Brummell’s debts caught up with him and he fled to France. He spent the last two and a half decades of his life living in poverty, mostly in Calais, growing slowly demented but always looking, in his restrained and careful way, sensational.

Source:
Bryson, Bill. At Home: A Short History of Private Life. New York: Doubleday, 2010.

Of Mice and Men and Health and Longevity

“Two 9-month-old mice from the study. The one on the right received the drug to eliminate senescent cells.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) In a potentially fundamental advance, researchers have opened up a novel approach to combating the effects of aging with the discovery that a special category of cells, known as senescent cells, are bad actors that promote the aging of the tissues. Cleansing the body of the cells, they hope, could postpone many of the diseases of aging.

The findings raise the prospect that any therapy that rids the body of senescent cells would protect it from the ravages of aging. But many more tests will be needed before scientists know if drugs can be developed to help people live longer.
Senescent cells accumulate in aging tissues, like arthritic knees, cataracts and the plaque that may line elderly arteries. The cells secrete agents that stimulate the immune system and cause low-level inflammation. Until now, there has been no way to tell if the presence of the cells is good, bad or indifferent.
The answer turns out to be that (p. A4) the cells hasten aging in the tissues in which they accumulate. In a delicate feat of genetic engineering, a research team led by Darren J. Baker and Jan M. van Deursen at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., has generated a strain of mouse in which all the senescent cells can be purged by giving the mice a drug that forces the cells to self-destruct.
Rid of the senescent cells, the Mayo Clinic researchers reported online Wednesday in the journal Nature, the mice’s tissues showed a major improvement in the usual burden of age-related disorders. They did not develop cataracts, avoided the usual wasting of muscle with age, and could exercise much longer on a mouse treadmill. They retained the fat layers in the skin that usually thin out with age and, in people, cause wrinkling.

For the full story, see:
NICHOLAS WADE. “Prospect of Delaying Aging Ills Is Raised in Cell Study of Mice.To Challenges For Obama, Add Another.” The New York Times (Thur., November 3, 2011): A1-A4.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated November 2, 2011 and has the title “Purging Cells in Mice Is Found to Combat Aging Ills.”)
(Note: thanks to Luis Locay for sending me the link to this.)

Another worthwhile article summarizing the same research, is:
SHIRLEY S. WANG. “Cell Study Finds a Way to Slow Ravages of Age.” The Wall Street Journal (Thur., November 3, 2011): A2.

Art Diamond Defended Air Conditioning in WPR Debate with Stan Cox

From archive of the Joy Cardin show:

Wednesday
6/8/2011
7:00 AM

Joy Cardin – 110608B
After seven, Joy Cardin asks her guests a weather-related Big Question: “Do we rely too much on air-conditioning?”

Guests:
– Stan Cox, Senior Scientist, The Land Institute. Author, “Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air Conditioned World” Author’s blog: http://losingourcool.wordpress.com
– Arthur Diamond, Professor of Economics, University of Nebraska at Omaha. Author, conference paper, “Keeping Our Cool: In Defense of Air Conditioning” (http://artdiamond.com/)

Link to streaming version of debate between Art Diamond and Stan Cox (author Losing Our Cool) on whether air conditioning is good (Diamond) or bad (Cox). Broadcast on Joy Cardin Show on the Wisconsin Public Radio network on Weds., June 8, 2011, from about 7:00 – 7:50 AM: http://wpr.org/webcasting/play-wma.cfm?FileName=jca110608b.wma&pagename=/webcasting/audioarchives_display.cfm

“Whatsoever a Man Soweth, That Shall He Also Reap”

“A gardener’s recipe for vengeance at the Sixth Street and Avenue B Community Garden in Manhattan.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 20) At the 700 community gardens sprinkled through the city like little Edens, the first commandment should be obvious: Thou shalt not covet, much less steal, thy neighbor’s tomatoes, cucumbers or peppers. But people do.

“This was an inside job,” Holland Haiis-Aguirre, a key-holder at the West Side Community Garden, said after she arrived at her plot on July 24 to pick a “big, beautiful, full-sized cucumber” that she and her husband had tended from infancy. Instead, she found a denuded vine; her prize cuke apparently was in someone else’s salad. “So frustrating,” she wailed.
. . .
Sally Young shrouds her 18 heirloom tomato plants in bird netting, but it is not birds she is trying to outwit. Claude Bastide, who grows aromatic herbs, had his spearmint and rosemary plants stolen early in the season. He responded with a sign: “Dear Plant Thief: If I catch you stealing my plants, I will boil you alive in a cauldron filled with poison ivy and stinging nettles until your flesh falls off your bones!”

For the full story, see:
ROBIN FINN. “Peck of Pilfered Peppers in City Gardens; Tomatoes, Too.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., August 7, 2011): 20.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story was dated August 5, 2011, and had the title “Pilfered Peppers in City Gardens; Tomatoes, Too.”)

Source of the title of this blog entry: The Bible, Galatians 6:7-9 (King James Version).

Wigmakers Petitioned King “to Make Wig-Wearing by Males Compulsory”

(p. 384) . . . , pretty abruptly, wigs went out of fashion. Wigmakers, in desperation, petitioned George III to make wig-wearing by males compulsory, but the king declined. By the early 1800s nobody wanted them and old wigs were commonly used as dust mops. Today they survive only in certain courtrooms in Britain and the Commonwealth. Judicial wigs these days are made of horsehair and cost about £600,
I’m told. To avoid a look of newness – which many lawyers fear might suggest inexperience – new wigs are customarily soaked in tea to give them a suitable air of age.

Source:
Bryson, Bill. At Home: A Short History of Private Life. New York: Doubleday, 2010.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Reagan Fought “Tyranny” of Big Government

Former Secretary of State Condolezza Rice, British Foreign Secretary William Hague and London statue of Ronald Reagan. Source of photo: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/7/4/1309780763409/London-statue-of-Reagan-u-001.jpg

The McCarthy mentioned in the passage quoted below is a California representative who also serves as majority whip.

(p. A9) The statue of a smiling Reagan, dressed in a crisp suit, was paid for by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation as part of a worldwide effort to promote his legacy, according to the organization’s executive director.
. . .
Though Mrs. Thatcher is in poor health and did not attend, she provided a statement that was read by Mr. Hague. “Through his strength and conviction,” she wrote, “he brought millions of people to freedom as the Iron Curtain finally came down.”
In a speech, Mr. McCarthy described Mr. Reagan’s fight not only against the forces of Communism, but against the “tyranny” of debt and big government. He and Mrs. Thatcher, he said, “did not move to the center to gather votes, they moved the center to them.”

For the full story, see:
RAVI SOMAIYA. “Finding a New Perch, Americana Takes a Stand in London.” The New York Times (Tues., July 5, 2011): A9.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article is dated July 4, 2011 and has the title “Statue of Reagan Is Unveiled in London.”)

My Jobs Haiku “Most Popular”

Yesterday (10/31/11) the Kauffman Foundation issued a press release reporting the results of their fourth-quarter survey of “top economics bloggers.” The URL for the press release is:
http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/only-half-of-economics-bloggers-expect-employment-growth-in-the-next-three-years.aspx

The last few lines of the press release are summarized below:
In their fourth-quarter survey of “top economics bloggers” the Kauffman Foundation asked the panel of bloggers “to describe the U.S. economy in haiku. Nearly 20 haiku were submitted and subsequently voted on by more than 500 public readers. The most popular was by Professor Art Diamond (http://artdiamondblog.com):”

jobs and Jobs are gone
need more Jobs to get more jobs
innovate to grow